Lobizona: A Novel

By Romina Garber

"Garber’s gorgeous novel combines the wonder of a Hogwarts-style magic school with the Twilight-esque dynamics of a hidden magical species that has strict rules about interacting with the human world." - BOOKLIST (Starred Review)

Some people ARE illegal.

Lobizonas do NOT exist.

Both of these statements are false.

Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who's on the run from her father's Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.

Until Manu's protective bubble is shattered.

Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her past—a mysterious "Z" emblem—which leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.

As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it's not just her U.S. residency that's illegal. . . .it’s her entire existence.

“With vivid characters that take on a life of their own, beautiful details that peel back the curtain on Romina's Argentinian heritage, and cutting prose Romina Garber crafts a timely tale of identity and adventure.”–Tomi Adeyemi New York Times bestselling author of Children of Blood and Bone

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Aug 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781250239143

Romina Garber

ROMINA GARBER is a New York Times and international bestselling author whose books include Lobizona, Cazadora, and the ZODIAC quartet. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and raised in Miami, Florida, Romina landed her first writing gig as a teen—College She Wrote, a weekly Sunday column for the Miami Herald that was later picked up for national syndication—and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She is a graduate of Harvard College and a Virgo to the core.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

The morning takes a deep breath. And holds it.

A shadow stains the sunny horizon. A black SUV with blue lights flashing.

Don’t come here, don’t come here, don’t come here.

The air grows stale as the vehicle stops outside our building. The street is so still, it could be playing dead.

Five men in bulletproof vests jump out. That’s when I react.

I storm into the stairwell and race down from the rooftop. Ten stories below, the agents thunder up.

I’m out of breath by the time I burst into the apartment.

ICE is here!

Ma leaps to her feet and tosses all the food she just made, stacking the utensils in the sink so it looks like the dishes have been piling up. There’s pounding on a door one level beneath us, and a man’s voice bellows out, We’re looking for Guillermo Salazar!

We rush to Perla’s room, where Ma drops to the floor and rolls under the bed. When it’s my turn, I look at Perla and say, They can’t come in without a warrant—

You don’t know what they can’t do.

The horrors Perla left behind when she came to this country darken her glassy gaze, and I realize she never got away. No matter how many borders we cross, we can’t seem to outrun the fear of not feeling safe in our own homes.

Screaming starts.

Followed by scuffling.

There are other people shouting now, and I recognize the voices of those neighbors whose papers are in order, yelling at the officers in Guillermo’s defense. Everyone else is probably hiding like us.

I have to pee and my leg has a cramp, but we stay under Perla’s bed for forty-five minutes. Ma and I don’t even speak until we hear the SUV drive away.

When the morning exhales, the street looks untouched.

But it’s not.

PHASE I

1

I always bleed on the full moon.

Ma blames the lunar cycle for hijacking my menstrual cycle, so she calls my condition lunaritis—a made-up diagnosis that depending upon inflection can sound like English or Spanish.

Comé bien que en una hora empieza lunaritis, Ma reminds me as she shuts the oven door and places the seasoned carne al horno on the table to start carving.

My mouth waters with a whiff of the meat’s smoky aroma. Obvio, I say, agreeing to eat my fill. Even if this weren’t one of my favorite meals, I’d still need sustenance for my sixty-hour fast.

I feel a quiver of discomfort in my uterus, and I pry my sticky thighs from the plastic chair to readjust my legs. The apartment’s ancient air conditioner has a hard enough time battling the Miami sun, but it can’t compete with the heat of Ma’s cooking.

"Cuando te despertés seguimos con Cien Años de Soledad," says Perla as I’m squeezing salsa golf over my roasted potato wedges. Ninety-year-old Perla has been homeschooling me since we moved in with her eight years ago, so she’s used to lesson-planning around lunaritis.

Sí, I say as I slice into the tender oven roast and spear my first bite of succulent pink meat. A delicious warmth fills my mouth and body as I chew, and I fleetingly feel sorry for Rebeca from One Hundred Years of Solitude who would only eat whitewash and dirt. Sucks that I won’t get to finish that book until lunaritis ends.

A tremor shoots up my belly, and my hand clenches around the red-and-white checkered tablecloth—a warning shot that soon I’ll be in excruciating agony. I stop chewing and close my eyes to focus on my breaths. When I open them again, three bright blue pills line the outer rim of my dinner plate.

I meet Ma’s concerned brown eyes.

The first few nights of my period are so painful that I can only endure them sedated. These chalky tablets plunge me so deep within my mind that it takes me nearly three nights to climb back out—long enough to miss my gut-contorting menstrual cramps.

I cup the pills in my palm, and for the first time I notice a faint Z etched into their center. Strange, since the blue bottle they come in says they’re called Septis. Maybe the Z stands for the zzz’s they provide.

I pop the meds in my mouth and chew them with the meat and potatoes.

Maldita luna, says Ma, glaring out the window. Damn moon. Perla follows up Ma’s declaration with a spitting sound, as if saying luna out loud could invite bad luck.

They think the moon cursed me, so they run through this ritual every month. Only, unlike them, I don’t dread lunaritis.

I count down to it.

I chase the food and pills with water and gaze out the window at the dusky violet sky. Any moment now, the shift will happen, and I’ll be transported to the only place where I don’t have to hide. The one world where it’s safe to be me.

I come alive on the full moon.

2

I awaken with a jolt.

It takes me a moment to register that I’ve been out for three days. I can tell by the well-rested feeling in my bones—I don’t sleep this well any other time of the month.

The first thing I’m aware of as I sit up is an urgent need to use the bathroom. My muscles are heavy from lack of use, and it takes some concentration to keep my steps light so I won’t wake Ma or Perla. I leave the lights off to avoid meeting my gaze in the mirror, and after tossing out my heavy-duty period pad and replacing it with a tampon, I tiptoe back to Ma’s and my room.

I’m always disoriented after lunaritis, so I feel separate from my waking life as I survey my teetering stacks of journals and used books, Ma’s yoga mat and collection of weights, and the posters on the wall of the planets and constellations I hope to visit one day.

After a moment, my shoulders slump in disappointment. This month has officially peaked.

I yank the bleach-stained blue sheets off the mattress and slide out the pillows from their cases, balling up the bedding to wash later. My body feels like a crumpled piece of paper that needs to be stretched, so I plant my feet together in the tiny area between the bed and the door, and I raise my hands and arch my back, lengthening my spine disc by disc. The pull on my tendons releases stored tension, and I exhale in relief.

Something tugs at my consciousness, an unresolved riddle that must have timed out when I surfaced … but the harder I focus, the quicker I forget. Swinging my head forward, I reach down to touch my toes and stretch my spine the other way—

My ears pop so hard, I gasp.

I stumble back to the mattress, and I cradle my head in my hands as a rush of noise invades my mind. The buzzing of a fly in the window blinds, the gunning of a car engine on the street below, the groaning of our building’s prehistoric elevator. Each sound is so crisp, it’s like a filter was just peeled back from my hearing.

My pulse picks up as I slide my hands away from my temples to trace the outlines of my ears. I think the top parts feel a little … pointier.

I ignore the tingling in my eardrums as I cut through the living room to the kitchen, and I fill a stained green bowl with cold water. Ma’s asleep on the turquoise couch because we don’t share our bed this time of the month. She says I thrash around too much in my drugged dreams.

I carefully shut the apartment door behind me as I step out into the building’s hallway, and I crack open our neighbor’s window to slide the bowl through. A black cat leaps over to lap up the drink.

Hola, Mimitos, I say, stroking his velvety head. Since we’re both confined to this building, I hear him meowing any time his owner, Fanny, forgets to feed him. I think she’s going senile.

I’ll take you up with me later, after lunch. And I’ll bring you some turkey, I add, shutting the window again quickly. I usually let him come with me, but I prefer to spend the mornings after lunaritis alone. Even if I’m no longer dreaming, I’m not awake either.

My heart is still beating unusually fast as I clamber up six flights of stairs. But I savor the burn of my sedentary muscles, and when at last I reach the highest point, I swing open the door to the rooftop.

It’s not quite morning yet, and the sky looks like blue-tinged steel. Surrounding me are balconies festooned with colorful clotheslines, broken-down properties with boarded-up windows, fuzzy-leaved palm trees reaching up from the pitted streets … and in the distance, the ground and sky blur where the Atlantic swallows the horizon.

El Retiro is a rundown apartment complex with all elderly residents—mostly Cuban, Colombian, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Argentine immigrants. There’s just one slow, loud elevator in the building, and since I’m the youngest person here, I never use it in case someone else needs it.

I came up here hoping for a breath of fresh air, but since it’s summertime, there’s no caress of a breeze to greet me. Just the suffocating embrace of Miami’s humidity.

Smothering me.

I close my eyes and take in deep gulps of musty oxygen, trying to push the dread down to where it can’t touch me. The way Perla taught me to do whenever I get anxious.

My metamorphosis started this year. I first felt something was different four full moons ago, when I no longer needed to squint to study the ground from up here. I simply opened my eyes to perfect vision.

The following month, my hair thickened so much that I had to buy bigger clips to pin it back. Next menstrual cycle came the growth spurt that left my jeans three inches too short, and last lunaritis I awoke with such a heightened sense of smell that I could sniff out what Ma and Perla had for dinner all three nights I was out.

It’s bad enough to feel the outside world pressing in on me, but now even my insides are spinning out of my control.

As Perla’s breathing exercises relax my thoughts, I begin to feel the stirrings of my dreamworld calling me back. I slide onto the rooftop’s ledge and lie back along the warm cement, my body as stagnant as the stale air. A dragon-shaped cloud comes apart like cotton, and I let my gaze drift with Miami’s hypnotic sky, trying to call up the dream’s details before they fade …

What Ma and Perla don’t know about the Septis is they don’t simply sedate me for sixty hours—they transport me.

Every lunaritis, I visit the same nameless land of magic and mist and monsters. There’s the golden grass that ticks off time by turning silver as the day ages; the black-leafed trees that can cry up storms, their dewdrop tears rolling down their bark to form rivers; the colorful waterfalls that warn onlookers of oncoming danger; the hope-sucking Sombras that dwell in darkness and attach like parasitic shadows …

And the Citadel.

It’s a place I instinctively know I’m not allowed to go, yet I’m always trying to get to. Whenever I think I’m going to make it inside, I wake up with a start.

Picturing the black stone wall, I see the thorny ivy that twines across its surface like a nest of guardian snakes, slithering and bunching up wherever it senses a threat.

The sharper the image, the sleepier I feel, like I’m slowly sliding back into my dream, until I reach my hand out tentatively. If I could just move faster than the ivy, I could finally grip the opal doorknob before the thorns—

Howling breaks my reverie.

I blink, and the dream disappears as I spring to sitting and scour the battered buildings. For a moment, I’m sure I heard a wolf.

My spine locks at the sight of a far more dangerous threat: A cop car is careening in the distance, its lights flashing and siren wailing. Even though the black-and-white is still too far away to see me, I leap down from the ledge and take cover behind it, the old mantra running through my mind.

Don’t come here, don’t come here, don’t come here.

A familiar claustrophobia claws at my skin, an affliction forged of rage and shame and powerlessness that’s been my companion as long as I’ve been in this country. Ma tells me I should let her worry about this stuff and only concern myself with studying, so when our papers come through, I can take my GED and one day make it to NASA—but it’s impossible not to worry when I’m constantly having to hide.

My muscles don’t uncoil until the siren’s howling fades and the police are gone, but the morning’s spell of stillness has broken. A door slams, and I instinctively turn toward the pink building across the street that’s tattooed with territorial graffiti. Where the alternate version of me lives.

I call her Other Manu.

The first thing I ever noticed about her was her Argentine fútbol jersey: #10 Lionel Messi. Then I saw her face and realized we look a lot alike. I was reading Borges at the time, and it ocurred to me that she and I could be the same person in overlapping parallel universes.

But it’s an older man and not Other Manu who lopes down the street. She wouldn’t be up this early on a Sunday anyway. I arch my back again, and thankfully this time, the only pop I hear is in my joints.

The sun’s golden glare is strong enough that I almost wish I had my sunglasses. But this rooftop is sacred to me because it’s the only place where Ma doesn’t make me wear them, since no one else comes up here.

I’m reaching for the stairwell door when I hear it.

Faint footsteps are growing louder, like someone’s racing up. My heart shoots into my throat, and I leap around the corner right as the door swings open.

The person who steps out is too light on their feet to be someone who lives here. No El Retiro resident could make it up the stairs that fast. I flatten myself against the wall.

Creo que encontré algo, pero por ahora no quiero decir nada.

Whenever Ma is upset with me, I have a habit of translating her words into English without processing them. I asked Perla about it to see if it’s a common bilingual thing, and she said it’s probably my way of keeping Ma’s anger at a distance; if I can deconstruct her words into language—something detached that can be studied and dissected—I can strip them of their charge.

As my anxiety kicks in, my mind goes into automatic translation mode: I think I found something, but I don’t want to say anything yet.

The woman or girl (it’s hard to tell her age) has a deep, throaty voice that’s sultry and soulful, yet her singsongy accent is unquestionably Argentine. Or Uruguayan. They sound similar.

My cheek is pressed to the wall as I make myself as flat as possible, in case she crosses my line of vision.

Si tengo razón, me harán la capitana más joven en la historia de los Cazadores.

If I’m right, they’ll make me the youngest captain in the history of the … Cazadores? That means hunters.

In my eight years living here, I’ve never seen another person on this rooftop. Curious, I edge closer, but I don’t dare peek around the corner. I want to see this stranger’s face, but not badly enough to let her see mine.

¿El encuentro es ahora? Che, Nacho, ¿vos no me podrías cubrir?

Is the meeting right now? Couldn’t you cover for me, Nacho?

The che and vos sound like Argentinespeak. What if it’s Other Manu?

The exciting possibility brings me a half step closer, and now my nose is inches from rounding the corner. Maybe I can sneak a peek without her noticing.

Okay, I hear her say, and her voice sounds like she’s just a few paces away.

I suck in a quick inhale, and before I can overthink it, I pop my head out—

And see the door swinging shut.

I scramble over and tug it open, desperate to spot even a hint of her hair, any clue at all to confirm it was Other Manu—but she’s already gone.

All that remains is a wisp of red smoke that vanishes with the swiftness of a morning cloud.

3

The aroma of sizzling bacon and eggs snaps me from the mysterious Argentine’s spell, and after picking up Mimitos’s bowl, I find Ma and Perla at the kitchen table, huddled over the caramel-colored calabaza gourd.

They stop talking as soon as they see me, and I wish I’d been paying more attention. It’s too late to eavesdrop now.

Welcome back, baby, says Ma as she refills the mate with hot water. She hands the drink to Perla.

What’s up? I ask, looking from one to the other.

You, apparently. Ma gets to her feet and plants a kiss on my forehead. Then she walks barefoot to the stove to check on the food.

She wasn’t always this casual about sedating me for three nights. At first, Ma would do a full workup when I awoke—pulse, blood pressure, temperature.

My period started on the first full moon after my thirteenth birthday. I don’t remember much about that cycle because by nightfall, my body was in such raging agony that I slammed my head into the bedroom wall hard enough to leave a dent, and knocked myself out. The dent is still there, concealed by my poster of Jupiter’s moons.

I was still in pain when I came to, and Ma offered me the blue pills. She knew about the sedatives from her days as a nurse in Argentina, and she had Perla request a rush prescription from her doctor. They’re so potent that just one tablet can knock a person out for twenty hours—which is why I take three.

What’d I miss? Has there been any news?

Ma keeps her focus trained on the eggs. I look to Perla, but she just stares back and sucks on the mate’s metal bombilla—a straw with a strainer at one end that filters out the yerba leaves. Her glassy eyes may be a blink away from blindness, but her gaze still feels as invasive as a microscope.

I sidle up next to Ma and set Mimitos’s bowl beside the fat blue glass filled with water that Perla changes out every day. She says it’s to ward off envy.

Ma seems smaller to me today, and I wonder if I grew taller this lunaritis. The thought leads to the same question I’ve been asking myself for months—Does Ma notice the changes in me?

She has to … but then why doesn’t she say anything? Should I ask her? Will she think I’m losing it?

Am I losing it?

I stare at her root line as she flips the bacon, tracing the graying locks layered in among the darker ones. And on an impulse, I tip my face down and kiss her head.

We usually only kiss each other in greeting, so Ma’s eyebrows arc up as she meets my gaze. What was that for?

The shock sugaring her voice makes me feel like a neglectful daughter. Nada, I mumble, cooling my warm face in the fridge as I pull out an almost-empty carton of orange juice and tip my head back to swallow whatever sweetness remains.

¿Y esa porquería? demands Perla in her gravelly voice. She’s as disgusted by my drink as I am by hers. ¿Por qué no probás un sorbito de mate?

I make a face at the mate she’s offering me, and Ma goes over to refill the hot water again. And you call yourself my daughter, she says as she brings the metal bombilla to her own lips.

I seal up the bag of yerba on the counter and make my best effort not to cringe at the bitter herbal smell of the drink that’s as sacred to Argentines as dulce de leche. Then I join Perla at the table and pick at a bit of dried sauce on the checkered tablecloth. I can still smell the spaghetti Bolognese they must have had on my second night of lunaritis. Last night, they made milanesas, my all-time favorite meal; when I opened the fridge, I saw they left me a couple of breaded filets of meat for lunch.

Ma turns off the burners and tips the bacon onto a plate, along with two sunny-side up eggs. She places the meal in front of me, then pours a dollop of coffee into my chipped Virgo mug and fills the rest with milk—my favorite drink.

Ma says in Argentina it’s called a lágrima because it’s just a teardrop of caffeine. Perla says it’s not so much coffee as coffee-flavored milk.

The pans hiss at Ma as she gives them a quick rinse, then she joins us at the table and fills the calabaza gourd with more water. She says she likes to make me the kind of big breakfasts she cooks for Doña Rosa’s kids, but she never tastes any of it herself. According to her, Argentines prefer light breakfasts.

I take a bite of crispy bacon, and its crunch is louder than usual, like someone chewing ice in my ear. I wince, and to distract myself I flip through the pages of the local Spanish-language newspaper that’s open on the table until I get to the sports section.

Ganó River, says Ma, her voice flat with annoyance.

Ugh. I drop my head in shame at our loss.

Ma and I share the same passion: fútbol. We’re long-suffering fans of an Argentine team called Racing. River is our biggest rival, and we mourn their every victory.

Ma and Perla trade the mate between them, and since they usually fill every atom of air with words, today’s silence is deafening. The tension grows so taut that I shovel down food quickly from nerves and keep riffling through the paper’s pages until a headline jumps out at me:

El presidente argentino será padrino del séptimo hijo varón de una familia de Corrientes

I scan the text, skipping over any words I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint exactly when my default language switched, when I started thinking in English and subtitling Spanish.

Wait a moment, I say through my mouthful of eggs. "Ley de padrinazgo presidencial—by law the president of Argentina becomes godparent to the seventh consecutive son or daughter in a family? How the hell did that become a thing?"

"Language," warns Ma. She hands me a napkin to wipe the yolk trickling down my chin.

The seventh child …

That reminds me of a story Perla used to tell me when I was little to make me feel better about my alien-looking eyes.

She would say I was born in a secret city that’s home to magical creatures, and every time a seventh son or daughter is born in Argentina, they have to make their way to that land to claim their werewolf or witch powers. Whenever I’d point out I’m an only child, she’d say that’s what makes me special: I’m the first of my kind—a non-seventh child born with magical powers.

I can’t remember the city’s name.

La ley está basada en la leyenda del lobizón, says Perla in her rattly voice.

The law is based on the legend of the werewolf.

I stare into Perla’s wrinkled face, her foggy eyes like dusty crystal balls, and I wait for her to crack her sardonic smile. But it never comes. ¿Qué?

The lobizón is the South American werewolf, she explains in her academic tone. It’s a mix of European mythology and the legend of the luisón, a different creature rooted in the stories of the Guaraní, people indigenous to South America—

Wait, I interrupt. Perla was a middle school teacher before homeschooling me, so I’m used to taking her lessons seriously. Only I can’t with this one. "What do werewolves have to do with Argentine law?"

Ma brings the bombilla to her lips and nudges my plate, which I abandoned as soon as Perla said lobizón, toward me.

There’s a superstition in Argentina that says the seventh consecutive son in a family will become a werewolf, says Perla, her soft g the only sign that English isn’t her first language. I used to tell you about it when you were little. They say that a long time ago, people really believed it, and to stop the abandonment of these children, the government enacted this tradition-turned-law.

Ma makes an impatient noise as she sets the mate down, and I let my fork fall to the plate, its clang underscoring my disbelief.

I’m no stranger to a good superstition—Perla thinks describing a nightmare before breakfast will make it come true, and Ma is adamant we keep three salters at the table, one for each of us, because it’s bad luck to pass the salt hand-to-hand—but I’ve never heard of a government-sanctioned superstition before.

"But why is it still in practice today, when we know better? I demand. And if the myth is about seventh sons, why does the law also apply to daughters?"

Yet even before I finish asking the question, I know the answer. It was in Perla’s story.

Because seventh daughters become—

¡BASTA!

Ma’s outburst is so abrupt that even the kitchen seems to suck in its breath, leaving little oxygen for the rest of us. She picks up the thermos, and for a few long seconds the only sound in the apartment is the hot water rushing into the calabaza gourd as she refills it.

Perla brings the mate to her lips when Ma hands it to her and doesn’t speak again.

None of that is true, says Ma, her voice rough. "The law started as a tradition brought over by Russian dignitaries who were visiting Argentina. They asked the president to be godfather to their seventh son because it was customary in their country, so we adopted the practice. That’s all."

Our discussion has been innocuous enough that Ma’s anger must have to do with something else … I think back to when I first walked in, how she and Perla seemed to be discussing something, something serious enough to silence them, and fear hardens into a rock in my gut.

I force myself to finish my food, even though my appetite’s gone. When my plate is clean, I bring everything to the sink and pick up Mimitos’s bowl to start washing.

Leave it, Manu.

Ma’s voice breaks the tense silence, and when I turn to look at her, she says, Quiero charlar con vos.

There’s a difference between a charla and a conversación: The first is a chat, the second is a talk. Even though Ma said she wants to charlar, by her face and tone, I know she actually wants to have a conversación.

The last time we had one of those was over a year ago when Guillermo from 2B was deported to Colombia. This morning, her forehead is creased with the same worry lines.

My gut is heavy as I follow her out of the kitchen and into our bedroom. When she shuts the door, my throat closes with it.

I don’t want you leaving El Retiro for any reason today.

My chest deflates; I was planning to visit the library to get the newest book in the Victorian fantasy series I’m devouring. But what if Perla needs me to check something out for our lessons?

The librarians know Perla from her teaching days, and they think I’m her granddaughter. They love her so much that they don’t even give me a hard time for keeping my sunglasses on indoors.

You’ll have to use what’s here. Ma scrutinizes my lopsided stacks of books, which she’s constantly asking me to tidy up.

I promise to be quick and discreet—

A sixteen-year-old girl out alone in the middle of the day is never discreet, she shoots back.

A) It’s Sunday, and anyway it’s summer, so no one’s in school. And B) I’ll be seventeen in two weeks.

Still, I know the real reason she’s worried. I may not have friends, but I spend my days devouring books and television shows, so I’m aware there’s a word for someone like me. Someone who looks too different.

(Freak.)

Ma, I say in what I hope is a reassuring tone. "I swear to keep my sunglasses on at all times, even in the bathroom—"

"Manuela, suficiente."

The sharpness in her voice means this is the kind of conversación where she talks and I listen.

I heard from Doña Rosa that random immigration sweeps will be happening in our area to meet this administration’s deportation quotas. If they ask for your papers, your mirrored lenses won’t be enough to shield you. ¿Entendés?

Ma works as a maid for a wealthy Cuban family that seems to be pretty plugged into the government because they always know when something’s coming down. Despite the stifling Miami heat, my fingers feel frozen. For Ma and me, deportation is death.

We came to this country a dozen years ago because we couldn’t stay in Argentina. My father was heir to a powerful criminal organization with hooks into the police and government, and his own people killed him for trying to run off with Ma and start a new life. His family blamed Ma for what happened, so she had to run—and when she discovered she was pregnant, she knew she could never go back.

Only we’re not safe yet.

Ma says she filed our visa request with her employer’s sponsorship, and we’re still awaiting an answer. She and I have a deal that she’s in charge of our finances and our residency, which means I’m not allowed to stress about either. I don’t know the process’s particulars, but what I do know is that until our papers come through, we’re undocumented. And since Florida banned sanctuary cities, we’re always at risk of discovery—so there’s a single guiding principle we exist by:

Visibility = Deportation.

And my face is entirely too visible.

Ma is still waiting on a response from me, so I nod my submission. Good, she says. Now why don’t you go shower, then we’ll play a game of chinchón?

"Seriously?" It’s been forever since Ma’s had time to play cards with me.

Doña Rosa told me I could come in an hour later today.

I nod eagerly, my mood improved. But as she’s leaving, I can’t keep from asking, Any news?

Without slowing down or twisting to look at me, she says, Yes, we’re citizens now, and I just forgot to tell you.

---

I perch on the tub’s porcelain ledge, waiting for the shower to warm up. I’m still chilly from Ma’s warning about ICE sweeps—US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The white noise is soothing, and after a while, I let my eyelids droop as the sound of the running faucet fills my head.

My mind drifts back to my dreamscape. Usually after being awake a few hours, that world sinks away. But today, I’ve felt a pull to get back there all morning, as if I left something behind in my subconscious that I need to retrieve.

I shut my eyes—

Daytime has dimmed to dusk.

I’m racing through a field of wild grass in the same golden dress I always wear in my dreams, flexible but formfitting with a pocket for stashing small weapons. The Citadel looms on the horizon, its black stone as impenetrable as outer space.

The scent of jasmine infects the air, a warning note that night is nearly here. And it’s hungry for me.

Shadows stretch across the landscape, veiling the foliage in silver, and I’m sprinting so fast, I stop feeling the ground. The moonlike opal doorknob grows larger, but something flickers in the fringe of my vision, and I stumble.

A puff of red smoke rises from beyond the black

Reviews for Lobizona

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

diverse teen fiction with potential queer interest (undocumented Argentine immigrant human-werewolf hybrid discovers her magical roots; magic, action, and even a little romance)

took a little while to settle into this story but once I did, it was a fun, fast-paced adventure. Would recommend.

[arkrayder · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I received an ARC of this book from Netgalley in return for a fair and honest review. This book started out well but as it progressed it started to lose momentum and got bogged down in to many scenarios going on. Pretty much every kind of problem or life choice was thrown into this. Misogyny, sexuality, illegal immigration, etc. It felt like the author should just pick a couple of topics and concentrate on those instead of cramming every little thing into it.

[sennebec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

There are aspects of this story that will remind readers of the Harry Potter Series and I say that in a very favorable way. This, however, stands on its own merits in multiple ways. Manuela has been isolated most of her life because her eyes are different. They have gold star shaped pupils, necessitating her wearing sunglasses at all times outside the cramped apartment she shares with her mom and an elderly lady they befriended while living on the streets of Miami. Her father is a mystery, supposedly the scion of an Argentine crime family, possibly dead, maybe hiding out somewhere. Whenever Manuela asks Mom, the responses are vague and guarded. Every month, when the moon is full, her period starts and the cramps and discomfort are so severe that her mother gives her three mysterious blue pills that knock her out for several days. When she notices suspicious people watching the apartment house, followed by a near fatal attack on the elderly woman they live with, Manuela panics and rushes off to find Mom at the home where she works as a maid, but what she finds is a completely different workplace and no sooner does she enter, than ICE agents raid it, carting off everyone save her when one of her mother's co-workers creates a distraction, allowing her to escape. She ends up hiding in the back of a pickup driven by one of the suspicious watchers, ending up deep in the Everglades at a secret compound where other teens with similar eyes are attending school. What follows this discovery is not only intriguing as all get out, it reveals a hidden society, another dimension which is accessible only during a full moon and the revelation of several aspects of her life that make the story impossible to put down. The book ends with that perfect blend of partial resolution and cliffhanging that sets up the sequel.

[oceancat-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lobizona is about Manu, a teenage girl living as an undocumented immigrant in Miami. She and her mother fled Argentina when she was five to escape her father’s family. As if this wasn’t challenging enough Manu also has very strange eyes that make her stand out in a crowd, not something helpful when you’re trying to keep under the government’s radar. And she gets terrible cramps during the full moon. She begins to suspect there is more to her father’s family than she knew. This was a pretty powerful book, reading Manu’s fear and anger and helplessness at the situation she was in and had no control over was very moving. So many people are in similar situations right now and it is heart breaking and needs to change. The fantasy part of the story while not as powerful was also enjoyable, and I really liked the characters she meets and how they are figuring out how to deal with their own society which has parallel problems to the ones Manu faces in Miami. I really enjoyed this book and look forward to the sequel!

[bibliovermis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This novel had a lot of new things to say about belonging partially to multiple cultures and fully to none. It also closely followed a lot of YA/teen fantasy adventure/chosen one tropes—but why not? Tropes and the hero's journey may make a story's path predictable, but they're fun. And no one seems to mind when the story is one of the exceedingly popular ones about white males. Why shouldn't an undocumented Argentinian-American girl get a turn at bat? Although Harry Potter is the series that kept being mentioned in its pages, the book was much more like Percy Jackson—it could easily have been one of these new "Rick Riordan presents" books, except that it was a bit more young adult than middle grade.